The Fremione Chronicles
by idreamofdraco
Summary: An anthology of short Fred/Hermione one-shots. Each chapter stands alone.
1. Ice Cream

**Title:** Ice Cream  
 **Words:** 812  
 **Tags:** Post-Hogwarts, Post-war, George is dead  
 **Notes:** Written for an ask meme on Tumblr in May 2017. ff-sunset-oasis requested Fred/Hermione or Daphne/Pansy based on the prompt "Who crawls through someone's window at 4AM to go for ice cream?!"

* * *

Hermione's eyes flew open, her heart thundering like a galloping hippogriff, but she wasn't sure what had awoken her. She stayed still, listening for something–

There it was again. At her window, the slow skid of the pane rising, the creak of wood as someone slipped into her room.

She clenched her lips together, trying to steady her breathing, trying to stifle the sound. Slowly, so slowly, she slid her hand under her pillow and gripped her wand.

A floorboard creaked on the right side of her bed.

In one fluid motion, she sat up and pointed her wand at the intruder, the tip sparking as panic began to overwhelm her.

"Whoa! Whoa there!" a familiar voice said.

Hermione reached over to the lamp on her bedside table and turned it on, the illumination blinding her. "Fred?"

"One and the same! Why don't you put that away?"

Her heart began to calm as she blinked owlishly. Once she adjusted to the light, she saw that it _was_ Fred standing next to her bed, looking thin and wan, but better than he had the last time she'd seen him.

She realized she was still pointing her wand at him and lowered her arm. "What are you doing here?"

"I had this brilliant idea and couldn't sleep. I need your help."

Concern colored her voice as she asked, "What is it? Are you all right?"

"Yeah, yeah, but I need you to come with me."

She pushed her blankets aside and slid her feet into her slippers before asking, "What's wrong?"

"What's wrong? What's _wrong?_ What's wrong is it's summer and Fortescue's is closed and there is nowhere else in Diagon Alley to get ice cream. _That's_ what's wrong!"

Hermione froze, her brow knitting in confusion. "What?"

"So my solution is to open an ice cream shop. Or have an ice cream stand inside WWW, I'm not really sure yet. But not just any ice cream! No ma'am! This ice cream will, of course, be made with magic. I'm thinking ice cream that brings back happy memories. What do you think about that?"

"You… you climbed through my window at–" Hermione glanced at her bedside clock "–four in the morning to tell me about ice cream?"

Fred's lips stretched into that familiar mischievous grin that made Hermione's stomach both sink and flutter in anticipation. "No, I climbed through your window at four in the morning so we could _eat_ ice cream."

Hermione shook her head, wondering if she was dreaming or if grogginess was making her delusional.

"I don't understand."

"What I'm saying is I have this brilliant idea for magical ice cream that makes people relive happy memories, and, as usual when I get an idea, I can't sleep until I've started working on it. Will you please come with me and help me try out different flavors?"

"Me?" Hermione's eyes widened in incredulity. "Why me?"

A pause followed her question, and then Fred sat down on the edge of her bed, his back to her. His shoulders slumped as he rubbed his face, his arms trembling. Fred had only been out of St. Mungo's for a week, and Hermione could see that he was pushing himself now when he should have stayed in bed to finish his recovery.

"Because George isn't here and Mum told me how you… how often you stayed at my bedside at St. Mungo's."

Hermione's cheeks burned, lips trembling. She'd seen the speculative looks from the Weasleys when they'd arrive at St. Mungo's to find her already there, sitting vigilant at Fred's side as they waited to see if he would wake up and if the wounds he'd received at the Battle of Hogwarts would heal. She wasn't sure what had driven her, but after George's death, the idea of losing Fred, too, had been an impossible reality to face.

"I know it didn't mean anything. You and Ron–"

"Nothing has happened between Ron and me," she said, her voice soft. She'd kissed Ron at the Battle of Hogwarts and he'd reciprocated it, but after George's death, he'd retreated from her when she'd needed him most. She still loved him as much as she always had, but something had shifted at the battle and afterward. Both of them had changed.

Fred didn't turn around, so Hermione crawled across her bed and sat down beside him. She took his hand, stilling his trembling fingers with her own.

"Where in the world are we going to eat ice cream at four in the morning?"

Fred looked at her, dark circles under his eyes from exhaustion and pain and grief, but his brown gaze was sparkling and warm. "I know just the place on the Muggle side of London."

Hermione couldn't help but catch his excitement. Her heart galloped in her chest and her fingers tightened around his. She smiled. "Let's go, then."


	2. Destination Wedding

**Title:** Destination Wedding  
 **Words:** 879  
 **Tags:** Post-Hogwarts, Travel  
 **Notes:** Written for an ask meme on Tumblr in May 2017. An anonymous requester asked for Fred/Hermione using the prompt "Don't panic, but I think we might have accidentally gotten married."

* * *

"Remind me again what we're looking for?" Sweat poured down Hermione's face, down the neck of her shirt, leaving her so soaked she might as well have jumped in the river they'd just crossed a mile back. The humidity and her pounding heart attracted all manner of insects looking for fresh, warm blood on which to feast.

Fred blasted a mosquito the size of a Galleon with his wand, Stunning it in midair. Hermione watched it fall to the forest floor with distaste as she tripped over an exposed tree root.

Fred caught her arm, preventing her from falling. When he let go, she noticed he used his equally sweaty shirt to wipe her sweat off his hand. She rolled her eyes, her mouth opening to comment.

"You know what we're looking for," he said, his good humor still intact despite hours of hiking in extremely uncomfortable conditions.

Hermione still didn't know why she'd agreed to accompany him into the Amazon rainforest. She couldn't even remember saying yes. She'd sworn to herself in 1998 that she would never go camping again, and yet, three years later, here they were.

" _Pasiflora mucronata_ , known to locals as _maracuja de restinga._ Otherwise known as a species of passion flower that is pollinated by bats."

"Fascinating!" Fred said with a grin.

His cheerfulness only worsened Hermione's own mood. "What do we need it _for_?"

Fred hitched his pack up higher on his back, and Hermione became distracted by the freckles that dotted his shoulders. They'd been hiking for three days now, and his skin had tanned to a warm, inviting color. Hermione, too, had grown browner than she'd ever been before.

"It's the number one ingredient in the Daydream Charms, which is our most popular product. I've lost touch with my supplier, so I figured I could collect the plant myself."

"And you need me because…?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Fred asked with a snort. "You're a walking library. If I can count on anyone to know how to find _Pasiflora mucronata_ and how to preserve it for the trip back to England, it'd be you."

Hermione's cheeks flushed at the compliment, though she wasn't sure she was grateful for her reputation at the moment as a butterfly the size of her head brushed right past her face. She startled, grasping Fred's pack to keep from falling onto her bum.

He paused and turned around, a question in his eyes, but then he froze.

"Looks like we have company," he said in a mock whisper through the side of his mouth.

Before Hermione could turn to see what had caught Fred's eye, she and Fred were forced together, a hoop of hand-crafted rope tightening around them as four natives hesitantly emerged from the wide-leafed foliage. Both Hermione and Fred's arms were bound at their sides as one of the natives, a young man Hermione assumed to be the leader of this group, approached cautiously.

She and Fred remained still, making themselves less threatening. The man wrapped the excess length of rope around Fred and Hermione's bodies as quickly as he could, ensuring that they could not move a muscle. A woman and two children hovered near a tree, ready to flee at any moment.

When the man was satisfied that she and Fred were no longer a threat, he returned to his family and ushered them back into the depths of the forest, retreating in the opposite direction from which they'd arrived.

The children lingered, approaching the bound captives slowly, and then laughing at them.

"Oh, ha ha," Hermione grumbled. Her face was pressed against Fred's chest, and his chin rested on top of her head. Her nose was beginning to itch but her hands were trapped at her sides, and she was not about to nuzzle Fred to scratch it!

At Hermione's utterance, the children scattered, disappearing among the trees.

"Wait!" Fred called. "You forgot to untie us!"

A moment later, the children inched back, arms laden with leaves and flowers. They circled Fred and Hermione, placing leaves on their heads and tucking the flowers between the ropes and in their hair.

A shout from the forest stopped the children, and they answered back in their language before, giggling, they returned to their parents, leaving Fred and Hermione in quite the predicament.

They waited with bated breath, halfway hoping someone would have mercy on them and come back to release them. After several minutes, that hope flew away like a monstrous Amazonian butterfly.

"Don't panic, Hermione, but I think we might have accidentally gotten married," Fred said, his smile wide despite the situation. She couldn't move enough to see his face, but she could feel his expression change against the top of her head.

"How can you—Fred!" Hermione gasped, wiping the humor off of Fred's face instantly.

"What? What is it?"

"Look!" She jerked her head and twitched her nose toward the flowers trapped—as they were—between the ropes. "The flowers!"

He was quiet for three seconds before he burst into laughter, finally recognizing the white, ten-petaled blooms.

 _Pasiflora mucronata._


	3. Spin the Bottle

**Title:** Spin the Bottle  
 **Words:** 990  
 **Tags:** Post-Hogwarts, Post-war, Spin the bottle, Side Neville/George  
 **Notes:** Written for an ask meme on Tumblr in Setptember 2017. An anonymous requester asked for Fred/Hermione using the prompt "I'd die for you. Of course, I'd haunt you in the afterlife, but, really, it's the thought that counts."

* * *

Hermione wasn't sure why she was participating in such an asinine game, but she suspected the second glass of wine in her hand had something to do with her poor decisions.

Raucous laughter exploded around her as the wine bottle she and Ginny had just finished off came to a stop on the floor in the middle of a circle of onlookers, the open end of the bottle pointing to George, who gestured to himself as if questioning the bottle's choice.

Neville's face had already been red as a tomato from all the alcohol he'd consumed, but at the prospect of kissing George or demanding a truth from him, his face and neck flushed further. He looked about ready to explode, hence the howling from the other drunken participants.

"Sorry, Neville, I'm taking this choice out of your hands," George said as he rose up on his knees and crawled through the center of the circle.

Before Neville could utter a word, George had grabbed him by the face and planted his lips on Neville's. More laughter ensued until the tension melted out of Neville's shoulders and a groan escaped from his lips. Then awkward titters replaced the laughter from before as the kiss continued far longer than anyone expected it to.

By the time George pulled away, silence reigned. Neville hardly noticed, his eyes half-lidded and dazed, his lips still slightly puckered as if anticipating the return of George's mouth.

Hermione cleared her throat and finished off her wine, more than a little uncomfortable (as everyone else certainly was, too) after witnessing such an intimate embrace. She didn't approve of these unseemly displays, but she wouldn't deny anyone their celebration after a summer of trials and vigils in the wake of the war's end. The first of September was just around the corner, and Hermione, Ginny, Neville, and Luna would all be returning to Hogwarts while Fred, George, Harry, and Ron returned to and started their careers.

They'd spent all summer together at Grimmauld Place, comforting each other with Fred and George's jokes and an abundance of alcohol, but they had to return to their lives, the lives that had been interrupted by Voldemort's Ministry takeover.

"Okay, okay already," Ron said, trying to clear the air after George's stunt. "Hermione's next."

She wasn't sure why she spun the bottle, why she'd let them rope her into playing at all, but she watched with bated breath as it spun and spun and spun, until it slowed down and then stopped… in front of Fred.

"Truth!" she called out in a preemptive attempt to stop Fred from copying George's actions.

Ron, George, and Ginny snickered, but the humor died on Fred's face. Well, maybe it didn't die, exactly. It certainly froze, though, twisted into something uncomfortable and—dare she think it?—honest.

He ran a hand through his hair, his smile wobbling a little. "I'd die for you. If I was ever given the chance, I would."

Hermione's breath caught, confusion making her brow crease. She automatically looked at Ron whose own expression was screwed up in a mask of incomprehension. No one said a word, startled by the seriousness of Fred's confession.

"Of course, I'd haunt you in the afterlife, but, really, it's the thought that counts, right?"

Those words and Fred's typical mischievous grin broke the spell he'd originally cast, and startled laughter once more filled the parlor. George slapped Fred on the back as if he'd told the funniest joke of the night, and Fred laughed in encouragement.

Hermione didn't laugh. No, instead her breath hitched, her lips trembled. She stood up, her grip on her wine glass close to shattering it.

Everyone stared up at her, but it was Fred's brown eyes that concerned her most of all.

"Don't you ever make a joke like that!" she said, her words unsteady.

Ginny reached for her arm. "Hermione, calm down."

"No!" Hermione cried, yanking her elbow out of Ginny's grasp. "Don't tell me to calm down! Fred nearly died at the battle! How can you sit there and laugh about it like nothing happened?"

Fred stood up as well, breaching the center of the circle to take Hermione into his arms. She tried to keep her distance, tried not to let him draw her in, but she was fighting against two opposing desires, to run from him and to hide inside him.

She knew she was making a spectacle of herself, and this she blamed on the wine as well.

"I'm sorry," Fred said, soft against her hair. His cheek came to rest on the top of her head, and he soothingly ran his fingers along the messy plait that ran down her back. "I didn't know. I'm sorry."

She hadn't known either. Not until this moment. Her affection had grown all summer as the twins had come around more often. She'd appreciated Fred's cleverness when discussing new products for Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes. She'd admired his generosity when he'd announced WWW's campaign to donate a portion of their sales to a relief fund for war orphans and widows. She'd fallen over every softly spoken word and kind gesture he'd tried to hide behind his jokes, all in attempt to cheer up others even while he continued to suffer alone.

She hadn't loved Fred when he'd been on death's door, but she loved him now, and any reminder of how she could have lost him before she'd truly had the chance to know him devastated her.

Fred kissed her forehead as he wiped tears off her cheeks with his thumbs, tears she hadn't noticed falling, and now _she_ was the one participating in an unseemly public display, which startled a laugh out of her.

She blinked, suddenly feeling as dizzy as a spinning wine bottle as Fred continued to run his hands over her, but she didn't mind. As long as he was hers, she didn't mind the spinning at all.


End file.
